Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat
BRRRR Refi Planner
Know Your Cash Left in the Deal Before You Buy
This BRRRR calculator gives you auto ARV from comparable sales, rent estimated from real comps, and the full refinance waterfall - purchase to cash-out - in seconds. No spreadsheet required.
The deal in, the refinance verdict out
The whole BRRRR strategy lives or dies on one number: how much of your cash comes back at the refinance. We calculate it before you make the offer.
Remy
Your AI real estate agent
Your AI Agent
Have Remy Run the BRRRR
Give Remy the purchase price, the rehab and the refinance you expect and it runs the BRRRR: cash left in the deal, whether the refi covers your costs, the cash flow after the new payment. Change the LTV or the rehab in a sentence and it recalculates the saved deal.
Run 4210 W Grace St as a BRRRR — cash purchase at 265k, 45k rehab, refinance at 75%
About $58,800 stays in the deal after the refinance. All-in is $315,300 (price, rehab and 2% closing) against a $342,000 after-repair value — 92% of ARV, so the 75% refi of $256,500 doesn't cover everything.
- Rent $2,650/mo leaves about $285/mo after the new $1,706 payment
- 5.8% cash-on-cash on the cash left in, DSCR 1.19
It's saved on your BRRRR list. Tell me a different rehab number or LTV and I'll recalculate it.
BRRRR analysis: 4210 W Grace St, Tampa, FL 33607
4210 W Grace St, Tampa, FL 33607
property
- propertyType
- Single Family
- bedrooms
- 3
- bathrooms
- 2
- squareFootage
- $1,520
purchase
- purchasePrice
- $265,000
- financingType
- Cash
- rehabCost
- $45,000
- rehabMonths
- 4
- seasoningMonths
- 6
arv
- estimate
- $342,000
- rangeLow
- $318,000
- rangeHigh
- $366,000
- confidence
- high
refinance
- ltvPercent
- 75.0%
- interestRate
- 7.0%
- termYears
- 30
- refiLoanAmount
- $256,500
rent
- estimate
- $2,650
- rangeLow
- $2,450
- rangeHigh
- $2,850
result
- totalProjectCost
- $315,300
- totalCashInvested
- $315,300
- cashOut
- $256,500
- cashLeftInDeal
- $58,800
- capitalRecycledSurplus
- 0
- equityAfterRefi
- $85,500
- monthlyCashFlow
- 285
- cashOnCashReturn
- 5.8%
- dscr
- 1.19
- allInPercentOfArv
- 92.2%
- refiCoversAllCosts
- no
- warnings
- none
How the BRRRR Analysis Works
Five stages, one connected model - each letter feeds the next
Buy
Purchase price plus your acquisition financing - hard money, bridge loan, or all cash
Rehab
Renovation budget with a contingency buffer, plus carrying costs while the work happens
Rent
Rent estimated from real comparable rentals in the area - not a guess
Refinance
New loan = ARV x LTV. It pays off the bridge loan and shows your exact cash out
Repeat
See the cash left in the deal and how much capital you recycled for the next one
It all flows through the refinance waterfall
Every BRRRR lives or dies on the same chain of numbers: what you put in to buy and rehab, what the property appraises for, what the new loan returns, and what stays stuck in the deal. Do it by hand and you're juggling a spreadsheet of loan math, comps, and closing costs.
The calculator runs this exact waterfall for you - ARV from comparable sales, rent from real comps, bridge payoff, refi closing costs - and lands on the one number that matters before you ever make the offer.
The Refinance Waterfall
Down payment + rehab + carrying costs
ARV $175,000 x 75% LTV
After the $90,000 bridge payoff + refi costs
Your real basis in a cash-flowing rental
Example numbers for illustration. The calculator runs this waterfall with your deal's actual figures.
Prefer to run the numbers yourself? Get the free BRRRR spreadsheet (Excel & Google Sheets compatible) - the same waterfall, free with a free account.
Cash Left in Deal
Cap rate and cash flow matter - but for BRRRR, capital recycling is the whole game
Why capital recycling wins
A traditional rental purchase locks your down payment into one property. BRRRR gets most of it back at the refinance, so the same capital buys the next property - and the one after that.
The less cash you leave in each deal, the faster your portfolio compounds. That's why the calculator makes cash-left-in-deal the headline result of every analysis, computed from the actual refinance waterfall - not a rule of thumb.
The infinite-return case, handled honestly
When the refinance returns more cash than you put in, your cash-on-cash return is technically undefined - you have no cash left invested. Some tools print a misleading percentage anyway.
We don't. When the refi returns more than you put in, we show the surplus - not a fake percentage. You'll see exactly how many dollars came back above your investment, alongside the cash flow the property produces from day one.
The Verdict
Know in Seconds Whether to Keep Going
Most deals are not BRRRR deals, and the sooner you know, the more time you keep for the ones that are. The summary opens with a straight answer on whether this property clears the bar lenders refinance against.
- A BRRRR-Ready verdict the moment the numbers land — no spreadsheet to interpret
- All-in cost against ARV on one gauge, so you see how much room the 75% rule leaves
- The whole cash story in three cards: You Put In → Refi Returned → Left In Deal
When It Does Not Work
A Dead Deal Turns Into an Offer
When a property misses, the answer is rarely “walk away” — it is “not at this price”. So instead of stopping at a red verdict, you get the price that would make it work, and a wasted evening turns into an offer.
- The maximum purchase price that still recovers all of your capital — a number you can send
- A plain warning the moment all-in cost passes 75% of ARV, before you spend an evening on it
- How far off the deal is in dollars, not just a pass or a fail
Everything You Need to Say Yes or Walk Away
A BRRRR fails in slow motion — at the appraisal, at the rent, at the refinance. Each screen below removes one of those surprises while the deal is still a decision instead of a mortgage.
Deal Inputs
Enter the Deal Once — the Whole BRRRR Solves Itself
A BRRRR is four decisions — what you pay, what you spend, how long you hold, and what the bank hands back — and every one of them moves the others. Set them on one screen and they resolve together, so you stop rebuilding a spreadsheet for every property and start judging every deal the same way.
- The after-repair value arrives already estimated, so you are not hunting comps to get started
- Your lender's terms, not a template — set the LTV, rate, term and closing costs you were actually quoted
- A rehab budget with the contingency you choose, so you underwrite what you would really spend
- Rehab and seasoning months carry their own holding costs — the line most spreadsheets forget
Cash Flow Analysis
Find Out the Rental Loses Money Before You Own It
The property you end up holding is not the one you bought; it carries a bigger loan at a higher value. This is where you meet that property before your money is committed. A deal that only works until the new mortgage starts has nowhere left to hide.
- Judged against the refinance loan you will actually carry, not the money you bought with
- Rent comes from real nearby rentals, with a confidence range that tells you how far to trust it
- Vacancy, repairs, capex and management are yours to set, so the cash flow is one you believe
- Change the rent and the whole picture moves — stress-test the deal in seconds
Multi-Year Projections
See What the Cash You Left Behind Actually Earns
After a refinance most of your money is back out of the deal, which is exactly why an ordinary return calculation misleads you here. Measure the return on what is still in the property and a BRRRR that looks unremarkable anywhere else can turn out to be the best thing you own.
- Returns measured on the cash still in the deal — the only basis that means anything after a refinance
- Your assumptions on rent growth, expenses, appreciation, taxes and selling costs
- Equity and cumulative cash flow carried out to year 30, so hold-or-sell stops being a feeling
- A return for every exit year, so you can see the moment selling starts to beat holding
Rental Comparables
Defend Your Rent Number Before a Lender Questions It
Rent decides whether the bank writes the loan and whether you keep anything afterwards, so it is the last number you should take on faith. Seeing the evidence — and being able to correct it — is the difference between a rent you hope for and one you can point at.
- See the rentals the estimate was built from instead of trusting a black box
- Drop a comp that is nothing like your property and the whole analysis re-solves
- The same rental data behind the Rent Estimator, so your numbers agree across the app
- A confidence range tells you how much weight the estimate can carry
ARV Comparables
The Number Your Refinance Depends On — With the Receipts Attached
Your entire plan rests on an appraiser agreeing with your after-repair value. Seeing the sales behind that number lets you find the weak assumption now, while walking away still costs you nothing — instead of on the day the appraisal lands low and the loan shrinks with it.
- Every comparable sale behind the value, closest matches first
- Exclude one that is not a renovated home and the loan amount and cash left in update with it
- Labelled as a market model rather than an appraisal, so you know what you are holding
- A stretched value gets flagged before you build a plan on top of it
The Checks That Keep a BRRRR From Going Sideways
Most BRRRR failures happen at the refinance. We flag the risks before you commit.
Refi Coverage Check
Does the new loan actually cover your bridge payoff and refinance costs? If the numbers say you'd need to bring cash to the closing table, you'll know before you buy - not at the closing.
DSCR Lender Check
Refinance lenders check whether the rent covers the new mortgage payment. We calculate the debt service coverage ratio on the post-refi loan and warn you when it falls below 1.2 - the threshold where many lenders shrink the loan or walk away.
Appraisal Risk Awareness
The whole plan depends on the appraisal hitting your ARV. Our ARV comes with a confidence range from the comp data, so you can see how much cushion you have if the appraiser comes in low - and stress-test the deal at the bottom of the range.
Then ask Remy about it
Beyond the guardrail math, Remy reviews the whole picture: refinance risk broken into appraisal, DSCR and seasoning, a BRRRR fit score, and ranked risk factors with concrete mitigations - including the honest call when a different strategy beats BRRRR on this property.
Ask Remy about this deal
Your AI real estate agent
Remy has this deal's figures in front of him. Start with a question — or ask your own.
Ask Remy
A Second Opinion Willing to Tell You to Walk Away
The expensive mistakes are the deals that were nearly good. Remy reads the whole analysis the way an experienced partner would and gives you the verdict you may not want — including that the property is worth buying, just not as a BRRRR. One avoided deal pays for the year.
- A fit score and the strategy that beats BRRRR on this property when one does
- Refinance risk split into appraisal, rent coverage and seasoning, so you know which one to fix
- Risks ranked with a specific mitigation for each, not a page of vague warnings
- Keep asking after you change the rent, the rehab or the refinance terms
Everything a BRRRR Analysis Needs
Real data in, real decisions out - no manual comp hunting or spreadsheet formulas
Auto ARV with Excludable Comps
After-repair value estimated from comparable sales. Review every comp and exclude the ones that don't match - the ARV recalculates instantly.
Rent Estimate with Confidence
Rent modeled from real comparable listings using regression on the actual comp data, with a confidence range so you know how solid the number is.
30-Year Projections with IRR
Long-term hold projections with equity growth, cash flow, and IRR for every exit year - see whether holding or selling wins.
AI Deal Insights
AI-generated analysis of refinance risk and strategy fit - should this deal be a BRRRR, a flip, or a straight buy-and-hold?
Saved Analyses
Save every deal you analyze, come back to it as numbers firm up, and compare candidates side by side.
Print-Ready Reports
One-click professional reports with the full waterfall, comps, and projections - built for lenders and partners.
PDF Report
A Refi-Ready Report in One Click
BRRRR lives or dies at the refinance, and the people who fund it work on paper. One click turns the whole analysis into a clean US Letter report you can email, file, or hand across a desk — with no retyping into someone else's template.
Nine pages every time: the cover verdict, the BRRRR deal and its refinance waterfall, stabilized cash flow, multi-year projections, sale analysis, the ARV and rental comparables behind the numbers, and every input the analysis ran on.
Click any page to enlarge it.
Share the Deal With Your Lender or Partner
One link puts the live BRRRR analysis in front of whoever needs to say yes — no account on their side, and you stay in control.
Write the Offer
The Price That Recovers Your Cash, Written as the Offer
A BRRRR deal is won at the purchase price, and the price only counts once it is in front of the seller. Smart Rental Investor writes that offer from the analysis itself, under the terms you saved for your rehab deals, so the number that recycles your capital is the number you actually send.
- The message quotes the purchase price the refinance math allows, the after-repair value from comparable sales and the rehab budget
- Cash or financed, with earnest money, inspection period, as-is condition and closing as plain sentences
- Send it to the listing agent or the seller, copied to a text or opened as an email draft
- Offer under the maximum and the message rewrites itself around the new price
Nothing Assumed
Your Terms Are Asked, Never Guessed
A wrong term sent by mistake costs a deal; a minute filling in a form does not. So the first offer of each kind asks what you actually offer, and nothing you did not type ever reaches a seller or an agent.
- Every field starts blank; the typical value sits beside it as a hint, not a default that slips out unread
- Fill in what you offer and leave out what you do not - a blank field never becomes a sentence
- The form changes with the deal: a wholesaler is asked about assignability, a rental buyer about financing contingencies
- Tick one box and these become your defaults for every offer of that type
Send It Your Way
Copy It, Text It, or Open Your Mail App
The offer leaves on whatever channel the other side answers. There is no outbound mail from Smart Rental Investor, nothing tracked inside your message, and no third party between you and the seller.
- Copy message puts the whole offer on your clipboard for a text, a portal form or a CRM note
- Open in email starts a draft in your own mail app with the subject and the message filled in
- When the listing names its agent, the draft is addressed to them, with no address to look up
- Nothing is sent by Smart Rental Investor: you read it, adjust it and press send from your own account
Seller
Today 9:41 AM
Read 9:43 AM
Illustration. The message is what Smart Rental Investor writes; the reply is an example.
Or Send It as a Text
The Same Offer, Sent as a Text
Plenty of agents and sellers never open email but answer a text in minutes. The offer Smart Rental Investor writes is plain text on purpose, so one tap on Copy message and one paste puts it in a thread, terms and all, from your own phone number.
- Copy message puts the whole offer on your clipboard, formatted to read on a phone
- Paste it into Messages, WhatsApp, or whatever the other side actually answers
- The same message, price and terms the email carries, so nothing changes between channels
- Save it to My Offers first and the text you sent is on record for the follow-up
Your Terms, Once
Set Your Terms Once, Then Every Offer Writes Itself
Most investors retype the same earnest money, inspection period and closing terms into every offer, and forget one when it matters. Smart Rental Investor asks for your terms once, on your first offer of each type, and writes every offer after that from them, so what changes deal to deal is the price and the address, not the paperwork. See how the Offer Writer works.
- Save your terms per deal type: rental, fix & flip and BRRRR, wholesale seller and end buyer
- The next offer of that type is written the moment the dialog opens, ready to copy or send
- Change a term for one property without touching your defaults, or update the defaults when your strategy changes
- Nothing is assumed: a term you leave blank never appears in the message
- Every offer you write is filed under My Offers with the terms it went out under
Share a Link
Send the Live Analysis, Not a Screenshot
Money partners decide faster when they can inspect the deal themselves. The link opens the complete report in their browser — and if the deal changes or falls through, revoke it and it's gone.
- One click creates a public link to the full report
- Recipients see exactly what you see — verdict, cash story, comps
- Revoke the link at any time; a new one is one click away
- See every link you've shared, with view counts, under Shared Reports
Privacy Control
Hide the Address, Keep the Numbers
Sharing a deal shouldn't mean giving away the address. Flip one switch and the same report shows the full analysis with the location held back — so you can pitch the numbers without inviting competition.
- One switch removes the street address, maps and coordinates
- Viewers see only city and state — every figure stays intact
- Perfect for deals under contract you don't want shopped
- Takes effect immediately on the live link
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Why a BRRRR Calculator Matters Before You Buy the First Property
The BRRRR method - Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat - is the strategy investors use to build a rental portfolio with the same pool of capital: buy a distressed property below market, renovate it, rent it, then refinance at the new appraised value so the cash-out loan returns most or all of what you put in. When it works, the money that bought house one buys house two. When it misses - an ARV the appraiser will not support, a rehab that runs over, rent that leaves the debt service coverage ratio under what the refinance lender requires - the shortfall stays trapped in the deal, and the strategy stalls on property one.
A BRRRR calculator makes that outcome visible before the offer. It runs the refinance waterfall - all-in cost, new loan at the lender's LTV, cash returned at closing, cash left in the deal - and shows the purchase price that would make the deal a full capital recovery. This one goes further than a spreadsheet: the after-repair value is estimated from comparable sales you can review and exclude, the rent from real rental listings with a confidence range, and the stabilized rental is checked the way a lender checks it, with DSCR, seasoning and appraisal risk flagged. Then the AI reads the whole picture and says whether BRRRR is even the right strategy for that property.
What Is the Refinance Waterfall?
Your all-in cost - purchase, rehab, contingency, closing and carrying costs through the rehab and seasoning period - goes in; the new loan at the lender's loan-to-value comes out; whatever the loan does not cover is the cash left in the deal. On a $439,000 ARV at 75% LTV the new loan is $329,250. If your all-in is $383,304, roughly 84% of your cash comes back and $60,639 stays invested. The calculator shows every step, not just the answer.
Why Does the 75% Rule Decide the Deal?
Most cash-out refinance lenders cap the new loan at about 75% of appraised value, so the all-in cost has to land at or under 75% of ARV for the loan to return everything. The calculator shows your all-in as a percentage of ARV on a gauge with a BRRRR-Ready / Over Budget verdict, and the maximum purchase price that would get you to full capital recovery - the number to negotiate toward.
What Is DSCR and Why Do Refinance Lenders Check It?
Debt Service Coverage Ratio is the property's net operating income divided by the new loan's annual payments; lenders typically require 1.2 or better. A deal can pass the 75% rule and still fail DSCR if the rent is thin, and then the refinance does not close at all. The calculator models the stabilized rental after the refinance - rent from comparables, expenses and the new payment - and warns when DSCR falls below the lender minimum.
How Should You Measure a BRRRR Return?
On the cash left in the deal, not the down payment. If $250 stays invested and the property cash-flows, the return is effectively infinite; if $60,000 stays invested and the rental loses $1,000 a month, it is a bad deal however the refinance looked. The multi-year projections use cash left in as the investment basis and the all-in cost as the tax basis - and Remy says plainly when a flip or a straight rental beats BRRRR on that property.
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore Related Tools & Guides
BRRRR is one strategy - compare it against the alternatives with the same data
Fix & Flip Tracker
Same property, different exit - see whether selling after the rehab beats refinancing and holding.
Your Max Offer
Reverse-engineer the highest price you can offer while still hitting your return targets.
Deal Analyzer
Full buy-and-hold analysis with cash flow, cap rate, and long-term projections.
Not ready to pay for a full BRRRR analysis?
That is completely fine - we have a free option too. The free BRRRR calculator runs the same refinance waterfall: all-in cost, new loan at your LTV, cash back at closing, cash left in the deal, the 75% rule check, and the max purchase price that recycles every dollar. It is free, online, and takes no account or email.
The difference: you type the ARV, rent, and rehab numbers in yourself. The paid analysis pulls the ARV from comparable sales you can review and exclude, models rent from real comparable listings, adds 30-year projections with IRR and AI deal insights, and saves every analysis with print-ready reports you can hand a lender.
Open the Free BRRRR CalculatorRun Your First BRRRR Analysis Today
Stop guessing whether the refinance will work. See your cash out, your cash left in the deal, and every guardrail check - before you make the offer.
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